He would go on to become my boss, my mentor, my friend. And, yes, even at times, my American father figure. But on that random afternoon in the spring of 1991, Bill Dobkin was simply the man who was interviewing me for a low-level position at the Great Neck Record, where he served as editor.
I was only 19, a pre-med sophomore at Stony Brook, working part-time at Sigmund’s, a gourmet supermarket at 683 Middle Neck Road that was just about to close. Five years later, Bill’s actions would usher me to law school, at the conclusion of my stint as the assistant editor of the Great Neck Record.
But all of that was in the future in 1991. My goal for meeting Bill was rather modest—and I had zero inkling that meeting him would change the course of my career and my life.
In those days, I was a staff newswriter for my college newspaper. But what I had decided I really wanted was to write a column. Except that my college newspaper gave that coveted assignment to another student.
“I’ll show them,” I thought to myself, quite annoyed and enamored with my own raw and unproven talents as a writer. “I will find another newspaper to write a column for.”
My family had moved to Great Neck just a couple of years earlier, in 1989. And I had remembered my uncle mentioning something about a newspaper in town called the “Great Neck Record.” They had a small local office near the train station. I called and someone helpfully told me that I could come in and show my writing samples to the editor and have him interview me.
As it turned out, the interview was overshadowed by something I saw on Bill’s wall before it began.
While I was waiting for Bill to finish speaking on the telephone, I glanced at the wall and noticed a copy of an op-ed article that Bill had written in 1989 in Newsday. “No Delancey Street for These Immigrants,” the article’s headline blared; there, Bill had explained that his Ashkenazi ancestors who had descended on the Lower East Side at the turn of the 20th century had more help from the natives to adjust to life in the United States than the Iranian Jews who showed up in Great Neck three generations later.
I was absolutely floored. This older American stranger—Bill was a month older than my own father—was actually advocating for my little community.
It’s been more than 30 years since I last worked with him. And I only saw him once over the past 20 years (though we spoke by phone periodically). I have been thinking a lot about Bill recently as we approach Jan. 24—what would have been his 95th birthday.
Just last week, I had a dream where I was thanking him. When I woke up, I decided to put that notion into action and share my sentiments about Bill—and his significant role in my life — with those who may still remember him and with a generation that has come of age without his wisdom and perspective.
As I got to know Bill, I would realize that the Newsday article about Iranian Jews personified who Bill was—a dogged champion of the little guy.
His first assignment to me was to profile Freddie Thompson, an African American grandfather who was retiring as a beloved bus driver in Great Neck (“Southerly Gentleman on Northernly Route,” Bill headlined my article).
The pages of the Great Neck Record need not have included tales of such workers, but it was important to Bill that we document the contribution of every minority group that made Great Neck so great. Thus, he would go out of his way to feature African-Americans, Hispanics, Persians, and Asians (although the established ‘long-time’ Great Neckers certainly still received their fair share of coverage).
And his affinity for the little guy extended to his coverage of business news as well. When a local gym closed and there was anxiety about paid memberships being lost, Bill was there. And when a certain local hospital failed to attend a meeting with Thomaston officials, Bill successfully fought with the advertising department to allow me to print the headline “‘No Show’ University Hospital.”
But, admittedly, it was his attitude toward the Iranian-Jewish community that was at the center of our relationship.
When an older Ashkenazi lady complained about why Iranian Jews did not speak English as often as her parents did, he reminded her that the Yiddish word for ‘hand’ was ‘hant’ to make the point that learning English was not so difficult for them to learn. “What’s the Persian for ‘hand’, Raymond?” he demanded that I disclose, driving home his point about the particular struggles of my community.
Not only did Bill take every opportunity he could to promote understanding of the Iranian Jewish community, but he also made it his business to see that I take up that cause.
It was Bill who arranged with Rabbi Bonnie Steinberg of Temple Isaiah to invite me to speak to their congregation on a cold winter Friday night in the early 1990s.
While maybe 25 people were there to hear me speak that night in person, Bill wrote about it in the newspaper to make sure my immigrant story was shared with all of Great Neck. Ditto for a number of other such forums that emerged in those years.
Bill and I would often talk about the lives of immigrants. Bill, himself a child of Brooklyn, told me that if I were to ever have the opportunity to return to visit my childhood neighborhood in Tehran, it would be very poignant.
“You would realize that the streets where you grew up on—you don’t belong there anymore.” I had never thought of it that way but his wisdom has continued to stay with me. (Other, more mundane lessons from Bill have also stayed with me, such as his clever tricks to fight absent-mindedness where his optimistic nature still shone through (“Things are not lost,” he would declare, not always so convincingly, “They are just temporarily misplaced.”)
One of the developments that most pleased Bill in our cause for inclusion in Great Neck was the establishment of the Sephardic Heritage Alliance Inc.
In 1992, when SHAI held its first event and reached out to me to help publicize the organization, Bill was thrilled that our growing community was finally starting to feel comfortable in their new land. Bill would prominently feature anything I would write about the organization. It was his way of realizing the vision he had about Great Neck.
Bill’s considerable tolerance was evident in matters of religion as well. In his circle of Reform Jews, a new Chabad settling in Kings Point was something of a hot topic in the mid-’90s. But not so to Bill.
He once sought to assure a reform rabbi that if a Nazi were to suddenly attack two Jewish men–a Lubavitcher and a reform Jew, the two Jews would instinctively work together to tackle their Nazi attacker.
Bill also included an “Interfaith Bulletin Board” in the newspaper where happenings at various houses of worship would be featured. Joint collaboration across faiths would get especially favorable coverage. Bill was a big fan of MLK Day and educated me that Martin Luther King Jr. had once spoken in Great Neck in the 1960s.
Bill’s greatest act of service to me was perhaps also his most difficult. By 1995, I had learned all there was to learn about running the paper and had even filled in for him on occasion, having joined the newspaper full-time some months after my college graduation.
Surely, I was his heir apparent as editor, I had thought to myself. But it turned out that Bill had a different vision for me. He retired from the Great Neck Record early that year and left the newspaper in the seasoned hands of Wendy Kreitzman, who was obviously far more qualified, having served as editor of the Great Neck News.
I, and my ego, however, were crushed by his decision. I confronted him and asked why he did not give me the job. “I want better things for you and your future, Raymond,” Bill explained in his trademark fatherly tone. I stayed on at the Great Neck Record for another year and accomplished a lot with my new friend and colleague, Wendy, but Bill’s fateful decision led to my enrolling into law school in 1996.
Things turned out pretty well for both Bill and me in the three decades since we left the Great Neck Record. He would go on to serve as a commissioner for his beloved Great Neck Park District before eventually retiring to Florida. And, I continued to take up the mantle of community activism as an attorney until I married and settled in Great Neck myself.
But I don’t think the 1991 version of me could have ever imagined the impact that the man who interviewed me for the columnist position would make on my life. And, oh, Bill did not even give me the ‘columnist’ job that day.
“Would I be able to write a column about Great Neck every week?” he inquired.
Well, no, I was just a college student who wanted a perch to write about life in general.
“You can clearly write,” Bill said after he had examined my writing samples, “But to write for the Great Neck Record, you need to write about Great Neck.” So, instead, he offered me a gig as a freelance reporter with a $25 per-article stipend. And life has never been the same.
Bill’s own life would come to its natural conclusion on April 10, 2024. But that’s not particularly newsworthy today. What remains very newsworthy, however, is that William S. Dobkin lived for 93 years and I and many others in Great Neck have continued to be the better for it.
